Blooms of noxious N2 fixing cyanobacteria such as Nodularia spumigena are a recurring
problem in some estuaries; however, the historic occurrence of such blooms
in unclear in many cases. Here we report the results of a palaeoecological
study on a temperate Australian lagoon system (the Gippsland Lakes) where we
used stable isotopes and pigment biomarkers in dated cores as proxies for
eutrophication and blooms of cyanobacteria. Pigment proxies show a clear
signal, with an inc...